


The Mysterious Disappearances in Lake Pontchartrain

by reeby10



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: 300bpm Flash Exchange Treats, Case Fic, Episode Style, Gen, Inspired by Lake Pontchartrain by Ludo, in so much as BFU does cases
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 11:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20208712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/pseuds/reeby10





	The Mysterious Disappearances in Lake Pontchartrain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BiffElderberry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiffElderberry/gifts).

“Today we’re looking into the case of the Lake Pontchartrain disappearances. Now this is a bit of an interesting one because it’s True Crime, but it’s _also_ Supernatural. A little crossover, if you will.”

“Are you saying Bigfoot kidnapped someone?”

“Well, some sort of a lake monster more than Bigfoot but… yeah.”

“Huh.”

“Yep. Let’s get into it.”

_“Three boys between the ages of seventeen and nineteen left their hometown in Missouri late one night. They’d been friends since childhood according to their parents, and they’d been talking about leaving town for years. They didn’t tell anyone they were leaving, but each boy did leave a note that their parents found in the morning. It said that they were leaving, but not where they were going._

_“Harlan, the oldest one of the three, was driving in his car with Darius and Noland. They stopped at a diner in Louisiana around midnight to eat. According to the waitress who served them there, everything seemed normal and none of the boys seemed in distress.”_

“Because a roadside diner is the pinnacle of normalcy.”

“...You have a point.”

_“It was stormy that night, with enough rain to make records in the town of Slidell, making driving dangerous. Harlan reported later that they got lost and stopped at a motel for a time, but no one there remembered seeing the car or any of the boys.”_

“Wait, so they didn’t all disappear?”

“Just wait, we’re getting there!”

“You need to tell the story faster. Or better.”

“Oh shut up.”

_“The diner was the last anyone saw or heard about the boys for two days. The parents all contacted police after finding the notes, but they were considered runaways and since there was no indication of where they’d gone, the police didn’t do much. Descriptions of the boys and the car were reported, but no investigation was launched at that point._

_“The car was found on the third morning, practically on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. It was empty except for the boys’ luggage and three of the doors were standing open. A couple driving by reported it as an abandoned vehicle and when police went to check it out, they connected it to the missing persons report.”_

“I bet they launched an investigation then.”

“Yep. The parents were pretty mad nothing had been done until then.”

“I can imagine. It’s like, ‘Oh, your kids are missing? Sucks for you.’ And then boom, empty car at a lake.”

“Haha, exactly”

_“They started a search for the boys in the area around the lake. It was pretty much assumed at that point that one or more of them had drowned as there were no signs of foul play around. They sent divers out, but no bodies were ever recovered.”_

“Couldn’t they have… what’s it called? Dredged the lake?”

“Yeah, you’d think so. I guess the lake was too big for that or something, because I didn’t find anything about them even talking about it. The local news reports were pretty sparse.”

“Sounds suspicious to me.”

“Oh we haven’t even _gotten_ to the suspicious part yet.”

_“The afternoon after the car was found, Harlan was found too. He was wandering along the highway about a mile away, covered in mud and practically delirious. They took him to the local police station to find out what had happened and where the other boys were._

_“That’s when things got really weird._

_“Harlan started telling the police that Darius and Noland were in the lake, which they’d already suspected. But instead of there being a fight or an accident or something, Harlan said that the two of them had been dragged in by the lake itself.”_

“I thought there was a lake monster.”

“There was. It’s just not what Harlan said actually did the, you know, dragging into the water. Apparently the lake monster, which he actually described in pretty great detail, came out of a bayou when they stopped before getting to Lake Pontchartrain. They drove away and _then_ the lake ate them or whatever.”

“Sure, sure, of course.”

“He also said there were crawfish screaming in the lake when it happened, so the police were obviously a little unsure of the truth of his story.”

_“Harlan saw a police psychologist since even though he’d never had signs of mental illness before, the police thought he was mentally unsound because of his story. But he was considered mentally sound. His story never changed. He continued to profess his innocence the whole time, telling police they needed to go ask Lake Pontchartrain if they wanted more answers._

_“His parents, and those of Darius and Noland, were called in as soon as Harlan was found and they all arrived that night. None of them ever gave interviews, even years afterward. The police wanted to keep Harlan, but since they so far hadn’t actually found any evidence of anything, they had to release him. He and his parents returned to Missouri the next day._

_“Darius and Noland’s parents stayed in Louisiana for two weeks while police continued to investigate. Nothing else was found — no witnesses, no evidence, no trace of the other two boys at all. It was like they just vanished.”_

“So… I’m definitely thinking Harlan murdered them and threw them in the lake.”

“That’s what the police thought too, but there really was no evidence. The car was clean and the rain had washed away any footprints that might have led them somewhere.”

“There wasn’t any evidence of a lake monster either.”

“But the police didn’t actually look into that. Actually, no one has as far as I could find.”

“Except us.”

“Except us. You up for a road trip?”


End file.
